As the Sonic Origins collection speedily makes its way towards the latest consoles with the promise of finally giving gamers an official way to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles on Nintendo and PlayStation platforms for the first time in 11 years, my mind has often been drifting to the video games that I would consider to be the real sequels to the Mega Drive’s Sonic the Hedgehog releases: the Sonic Advance series for Game Boy Advance, and how they – frankly – deserve so much more love.
To provide you with some probably much-needed context, while Sega made the rough transition towards Sonic the Hedgehog being a multi-platform action game series with the experimental Sonic Heroes, an Osaka-based contractor called Dimps was put in charge of developing cheaper 2D entries with the original gameplay style for then-upcoming handheld devices like the Game Boy Advance and the Nokia NGage.
These new releases (which stopped being on the NGage after the first one Sonic N, because well … it was the NGage) would keep fans of the blue blur interested in the brand, introduce him to new demographics, and help to steer the former console manufacturer away from bankruptcy with steady injections of new cash that could, theoretically, help to keep the ailing company afloat.
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